BENGALURU: The ticket checking staffers on board the KSR Bengaluru-Hazrat Nizamuddin Rajdhani Express departing from Bengaluru on Friday night became the first in the South Western Railway Zone to be provided Handheld terminals with details of all ticketed passengers. Not a single manual chart figured on any of its train coaches.
The move has been launched in line with a recent Railway Board directive that mandated that all Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains in the country need to adopt digitalisation in its ticketing system.
K Shiva Prasad, Principal Chief Commercial Manager, South Western Railway, and Divisional Railway Manager R S S Saxena handed over the first three terminals to Train Captain P Divakar and Train Ticketing Examiners (TTEs) Manik Lal and P K Sha. A total of 36 terminals, each costing `13,000 has been earmarked for the four rakes of the Rajdhani.
This terminal will ensure absolute transparency as TTEs on board trains can upload the position of berths available after allotment. This uploaded position can be viewed in all passenger reservation system terminals and also on the website, www.indianrail.gov.in Since details of passengers who have not travelled will be sent to the coaching refund system, it will expedite the refund process.
Saxena told newspersons, “The TTE cannot change any data as anything uploaded will go directly to the system. This will be done online on a real-time basis.”It will be introduced in the Bengaluru-Chennai Shatabdi and the Yesvantpur-Howrah Duronto within two to three months,” he said. It will be introduced on all regular trains in later stages, the DRM said.
Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, Bengaluru Division, N R Sridharamurthy, said, “Every day we use so much paper across Indian Railways to put out charts. Digitising the process is very environment friendly. It will save a lot of time for TTEs too who presently need to collect chart bundles from a section and sort them all out.” Ticket examiners Express spoke to said the system offered lot of convenience.